What is NET?
The Network of Ensemble Theaters (NET) is a national collective and community of organizations, artists, organizers, and cultural workers committed to the power of collaborative creation as a force for artistic innovation, cultural organizing, and systemic change.
At NET, Ensemble practice is more than a way of making theater, it’s a model for community building, shared leadership, and mutual support. It’s how we create, how we gather, and how we build something bigger than ourselves.
We operate from the perspective that a performance based ensemble is a group of individuals dedicated to collaborative creation, committed to working together consistently over years to develop a distinctive body of work, practices, and ways of being. Ensemble members, both artists, and administrators, are empowered as core decision-makers who help to shape their company's artistic direction, values, processes, and organizational structure.
NET serves and is comprised of more than performance ensembles, collectives, and individual ensemble practitioners.
We also welcome and need to be in community with co-creators, producers, scholars, educators, teaching artists, students, cultural workers, organizers, activists, policymakers, funders, community partners, and other allies.
Why NET Exists: Power in Collaboration
Ensemble and collaborative artists know that this work isn’t meant to be done alone. While institutions often prioritize individual achievement, ensemble practice thrives on shared leadership, deep trust, and collective creativity. But the reality is that funding models, national arts policies, and industry structures aren’t built for this way of working.
That’s where NET comes in.
We exist because ensemble and collaborative practitioners deserve the same access to resources, advocacy, and sustainability as institutional models of theater. We exist because no single artist or ensemble should have to navigate these challenges in isolation.
Through NET, artists and ensembles connect not just to each other, but to the knowledge, networks, and advocacy needed to sustain and grow their work. Whether it’s developing new funding pathways, documenting the impact of ensemble practice, or advocating for systemic change, NET ensures that ensemble makers have the infrastructure, visibility, and collective power they need.
Explore our website to learn more about NET’s programs, our member-only resource hub, and how we’re shaping a future where ensemble practice isn’t just possible—it’s prioritized.
Knowledge Building + Access
NET understands that all ensemble projects and strategies, past and present, combine to constitute a body of knowledge. NET is committed to developing this body of knowledge, transmitting the legacy of ensemble practice and culture to current and future generations of artists, and supporting its ongoing evolution.
These actionable values help us honor the ways that we build knowledge and understanding of what NET is now or could be; and the state of the ensemble field within the current national landscape. It creates new opportunities for discovery in a time when some might think we shifted because we lacked learning, instead, the Working Group is shifting because we know there is a lot to uncover, contextualize, and activate.
Learning - the commitment to the process of learning and unlearning ways of being, doing, and leading through feedback loops and leaning.
Leaning -leaning on expertise of self others experience and our variety of styles, aesthetics, cultural standards, and performance vocabularies.
Curiosity- Asking hard questions: discovering limits and desire, naming new systems and ways of staying open when fear and doubt want to lead.
Failure- more than positivity, a spectrum of grief and joy; seeing failure as an open door, not as something that’s closed.
Mission Statement
A national community of artists and arts organizations dedicated to collaborative creation, the Network of Ensemble Theaters (NET) exists to propel ensemble theater practice to the forefront of culture and society. NET links a diverse array of ensembles and practitioners to one another and the performing arts field, encouraging collaborations and knowledge building/dissemination. NET is committed to the advancement of the ensemble form and strives to bring about change in the world beyond ourselves through the transformative power of collaborative theater and ensemble practice. We support bold artistic and civic experiments and aim to heighten the impact and excellence of ensemble theater.
Statement of Purpose
The purpose of the Network of Ensemble Theaters (NET) is to:
Sustain Ensembles. Through our programs and initiatives, NET strives to secure the future of ensemble theatermaking and ensemble practice by supporting the growth, health, and vibrancy of ensemble companies, artists, and practitioners. NET provides opportunities for collaboration, exchange, peer knowledge sharing, and mentorship to improve ensembles’ organizational and artistic capacity building.
Build Knowledge. A tremendous amount of knowledge exists within individuals and companies. NET collects, organizes, and distributes this community learning to deepen artistic investigations and organizational innovations. NET convenes our members and offers professional development opportunities to enhance and share field knowledge.
Advocate. NET organizes and promotes ensemble theater making as a distinct element of theater and performance, amplifying our collective voice for local and national impact. NET advocates in cultural policy discussions for ensembles and ensemble practice, and serves as a resource to private foundations, government funders, educational institutions, and others in the field and beyond.
Manifesto
This manifesto was shaped collaboratively by members of NET's early Steering Committee in a series of iterations from 2003 to 2006.
The Network of Ensemble Theaters was created by and for artists. We exist to support those who have dedicated their life’s work to creating theater through the ensemble process.
Some ensembles create original work; others work interpretively or with adaptations. Some ensembles are rooted in the community, whether that community is geographic, intellectual, aesthetic, or ethnic. Other ensembles consciously stand apart from community in order to critique and provoke. All of us create theater that is meaningful to each member and to our diverse audiences. We prize most highly the benefits that arise from artists working together over extended periods of time.
The most unique aspect of our work is that the primary decision-making power rests in the hands of the artists. Ensemble theater is the antithesis of the corporate model that dominates the theatrical landscape in America today. Our resources are dedicated to supporting artists and the artistic process.
NET is sparked by the vital and enduring international heritage of collective theater making. Our work is committed to the unique event of the living stage, where the imagination of artist and audience is linked in social communion and mutual creativity.
We see at the center of ensemble work an essential investigation and evolution of way of working that is fundamentally different in its impetus, its engagement of community, its artist driven organizations, and the collaborative manner in which creation occurs. This is the soul, the essence, of ensemble work.
By joining together in a Network of Ensemble Theaters we strive to give strength to each other; to share our resources; to create a forum for controversy and debate; to document and articulate the heritage and body of work of ensemble practice; and to maximize our ability to bring about change in the world beyond ourselves through the transformative power of collaborative theater.